1. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to apparatus for reducing material so as to facilitate the separation of different classes of material, and especially the metallic and non-metallic material in vehicle tires and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The disposal of vehicle tires is especially troublesome because such items are objectionable in landfills, and destruction by burning is no longer permitted. Apparatus is known for grinding tires to reduce the bulk without regard to the metallic wires embedded in the rubber. It is known that rock and coal crushers will not process vehicle tires as the hammer mill of this type of apparatus is not suitable to process vehicle tires for separating the metallic from the rubber material. Prior art falling into this class of unsuitable apparatus is illustrated in West 2,767,929 of Oct. 29, 1956, Danyluk 2,973,909 of Mar. 7, 1961, Schafer et. al. 3,857,519 of Dec. 31, 1974, Miller 4,002,302 of Jan. 11, 1977, and Hinsey et. al. 5,052,630 of Oct. 1, 1991.
Apparatus that is addressed to the reduction of vehicle tire carcass and refuse shredding is Ulsky 4,394,983 of Jul. 26, 1983 and Ulsky 4,355,556 of Oct. 26, 1982, the latter patent being constructed to remove a tire reinforcing rim from the body of the carcass. These patents recognize that shredding and grinding vehicle tires is a most difficult operation for common refuse shredders.
In a broad sense, the present invention is directed to providing a unique combination of features in apparatus that respond to the problem of disposing of vehicle tires by an initial reduction of the size of the tire carcass followed by separating the rubber components and magnetic type content of the tires from the remainder of the carcass so that the magnetics become a by-product of the reduction process.
A broad object of the apparatus is to process vehicle tire carcasses by reducing the size thereof and then subjecting the tire to an initial stripping of the rubber from the metallic wire to better expose that wire by pulling the rubber from the wire.
Another object is to provide a cage at the outlet from apparatus that grinds the carcass material to determine the particle size of the rubber with a minimum of wire remainder.
Still another object is to operate apparatus that is unique in its capability of pulling magnetic wire reinforcement from the rubber body material while not deliberately cutting the wire strands so that such wire that accumulates in the grinding chamber is prevented from jamming the apparatus by being magnetically removed by a selectively rotary means exerting a magnetic withdrawal force.
Other objects of the invention will be set forth in the following description.